What Promotions at Work are Usually Based On - Moving Up the Ladder Quickly!

Hey, everyone. This is Self made Millennial. I'm Madeline Mann. Today I'm going to tell you three ingredients you need to get a promotion. Now, the first one is your performance, right? You work really hard and you get a promotion. That's the way I've always thought it's supposed to work. But there's actually two other things that we're all totally ignoring, or maybe not all of us, but I certainly did, especially in the beginning of my career. And so I'm going to walk you through those as well as my three strategies to make sure I'm addressing those other two areas. And I've heard a lot from introverts that they love. Third strategy. So if you're an introvert, that one will be especially good for you. So my inspiration for this video is the beautiful Harvey Coleman. He wrote a book called Empowering Yourself, the Organizational Game Revealed. And in his book, he talks about how he reached like a glass ceiling in his career and couldn't, like, punch through to get to the next level. And so he did a bunch of research and actually found something that he was not expecting, and that is pie. Now, this is not a cookbook. PI stands for performance, image, exposure, which are the sweet ingredients to career success. He said that performance only accounts for 10% of career success. What I know. Stay with me here. He says that Image accounts for 30% of career success, which is how people perceive working with you. And finally, there's exposure, which, if you're doing the math along with us at home, that accounts for 60% of career success. Oh. Exposure means that people actually know what you've done and how it matters to the greater organization. I will link the book in the description so you guys can learn way more about this stuff. So when I learned this, I was pretty saddened by it. I feel like it's pretty unfair that it's not just purely performance based, that we have to be self promotional to actually move up in our careers. But I thought about it in terms of a product. Just think about it. Your product could have the best performance out of all the other products that are like it. But let's say the image is wrong. The packaging looks weir. It just doesn't stand out on the shelf. No one wants to pick it up. Or if the exposure's off, like, no one's ever heard of this product. There's no marketing. No one even knows it exists. If they knew it existed, they would go and buy it immediately. So if we think about it that way, even the best products without the Image and exposure would never sell, and so we need to think about that in our careers as well. So let me tell you three practical ways to improve your image and exposure at your job. So tip number one, change the way you talk about yourself. Now. Self branding is getting so ridiculous these days. It's just sometimes just gag worthy. I mean, you have your innovator, your influencer, terminator, but you really should start characterizing yourself in the way you want to be known. For example, let's say you are an office manager. You do tons of different tasks, but you really like it when you get help on events. So begin self branding yourself as an events expert, right? Put in your LinkedIn profile, put it on any internal bios or anything like in your internal instant messenger, and then start volunteering for things like, hey, I see your team is doing an event. I'm like, really all about events. I have a lot of expertise there. I can help you. Then everyone just associates you with that. So let's say that then they have to hire someone full time focusing on events. You're top of mind and so you're not waiting for someone to tell you you're great events. You need to focus on this. You are self branding that. Even if, let's say, you really wish that more people would ask you to do speaking opportunities, right? You love speaking. Just put on your LinkedIn. Hey, here are the topics that I speak on. I'm available for these. Please reach out if you need a speaker at your next event. Just kind of put the bat signal out there. Tip number two, tell people what you want. What you really, really want. Now I'm gonna tell you a story about going to a magic show, which this doesn't really have anything to do with my career, but trust me, it's coming all around. I went to this magic show and I was a little embarrassed about this, but I told my group, look, I really want to go up on stage. I think it'd be so fun to be participating in one of their magic tricks. They then, like, helped me to sit. We all sat like kind of close to the front so they put me on the end seat so it'd be easy to pull me out of the audience. And then when the magician would ask for volunteers, I'd raise my hand and my entire group would point to me. In the end, even though I felt embarrassed telling people that I really wanted that, I got up on stage, I got my wish, and it was super cool. The magic trick was amazing. And so that's the lesson here, is that when you tell people what you want, they will proactively help you to get there. There was probably someone sitting down in that audience quietly, kind of sheepishly raising their hand, really wanting to go up on stage, but hadn't told their group that they really wanted it. So here I was getting the advantage, getting up on stage because I told people. And that's the way it is in the workplace, right? Like, if there's a leadership program that you really want to be a part of and no one nominated you, then the best thing to do is to tell people, hey, I really want to be in that leadership program. They're probably like, oh my gosh, I totally would nominate you. You're perfect. But they don't think of it because they just don't realize that's your priority. All right, that brings us to number three. Debrief your major projects. So you just finished a big project, you put so much work into it, and your manager wants to meet with you, and they end the meeting and they immediately are like, all right, let's talk about our next project. And they zoom ahead, hit pause at that moment and say, hey, I would really like to take a moment to reflect on the project we just had. Before this meeting, you'll want to make sure you reflected yourself right? So you've gone back, gotten all the data, gotten the before picture, the after picture, and everything that happened between. And I honestly, I not enjoy this process of going back and putting all that stuff together. But once you do, you realize how much work you did, how much you move the needle, and you'll be able to articulate it to your boss. While a lot of us will probably want to zoom ahead to what you accomplished and those positive notes, make sure you start with the problem right where things began. Because often your manager will forget how bad things were a few months ago when the project started and how much work has happened. So really make them feel that pain that you then helped to make to today. And of course, this will also be a two way conversation, right? You guys should walk through what went well, what could be done better, and then the key takeaways from the project. Every time I do this, I'm so glad I did because it brings up such moments of thoughtfulness, reflection, and also celebration. Bosses want to really see how much their team is accomplishing, and then they can share that information to their bosses. So really take the time to do this. So when you go to work, make sure you're thinking about pie all day. You're gonna get hungry, but I think it's worth it for your career. Now, they don't put those, like, buttons on the video for nothing. Make sure you exercise your right to use them and hit a like on this video as well as subscribe to this channel. I got videos coming out every week. Come on. You want to check it out? I hope, I hope, I hope. Thanks so much, everyone. See you next time. Wi Fi. High five.